Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.

Hypocrisy is no cheap vice; nor can our natural temper be masked for many years together.

However evil men may be they dare not be openly hostile to virtue, and so when they want to attack it they pretend to find it spurious , or impute crimes to it.

Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

'Tis very strange Men should be so fond of being thought wickeder than they are.

What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless?

Fewer possess virtue, than those who wish us to believe that they possess it.

Fine words dresse ill deedes.

You smile with pomp and rigor, you talk of benevolence and virtue; I act with benevolence and virtue and get murdered time after time.

That is the way with people ... If they do you wrong, they invent a bad name for you, a good name for their acts and then destroy you in the name of virtue.

One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.

Trust him with none of thy individualities who is, or pretends to be, two things at once.

I believe with the best of who I am in God, but I sometimes think if anybody would watch me and [they] didn't believe a damn thing, they would have a very hard time deciding which of us is which.

Hypocrisy is a revolting, psychopathic state.

That practis'd falsehood under saintly shew, Deep malice to conceal, couch'd with revenge.

An enemy is anyone who tells the truth about you.

Vice deceives us when dressed in the garb of virtue.

You may have orthodox heads, and yet you may have the devil in your hearts.

A criminal is twice a criminal when he adds hypocrisy to his crime.

Bourgeois morality is largely a system of making cheap virtues a cloak for expensive vices.

Hypocrisy itself does great honor, or rather justice, to religion, and tacitly acknowledges it to be an ornament to human nature. The hypocrite would not be at so much pains to put on the appearance of virtue, if he did not know it was the most proper and effectual means to gain the love and esteem of mankind.

Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both.

After all, why be good? How many will actually believe it of us?

Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.